Register Now for FORUM 2004 - Your Public
Affairs Educational EventIt is not too late to register for FORUM
2004! The theme of FORUM 2004 is "Communicating Cable's
Value." It reflects the event's focus on how cable public
affairs professionals can effectively communicate cable's value
and technologically superior platform to customers, media, and
government officials. Through carefully chosen general sessions,
breakouts and special luncheons, FORUM 2004 will address many
considerable ways to leverage communication about cable's
advantages to your advantage. The conference is scheduled
for March 21 to 24, 2004, at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington,
DC. On site registration is also available on the ballroom
level of the hotel. For
information about FORUM 2004 registration and sponsorship
opportunities, visit http://www.magnetmail.net/ls.cfm?r=2707054&sid=128057&m=31738&u=CTPPA&s=http://www.ctpaa.org/forum.shtml.

Reserve
a Table at the 2004 Beacon Ceremony

CTPAA is offering reserved
tables for the 2004 Beacon Ceremony on March 23, 2004, at the
Fairmont Hotel, Washington, DC. A reserved table for registered
FORUM attendees is $1,500. For dinner guests only, a reserved
table at the Beacons Ceremony is $3,000 (includes 10 tickets).
For more information, contact Michelle Butler at 202-775-1082 or
mbutler@ctpaa.org.

CTPAA
Master Course: Media Training Workshop Be sure to add CTPAA's Master Course
(additional $155 registration fee required) Media Training Workshop along with your registration.
This hands-on workshop will include an opportunity for
participants to be videotaped in a mock media interview. It will
provide real world experiences on building ongoing relationships
with the media, responding to media inquiries & requests,
preparing a spokesperson for a media interview, effective &
ineffective responses to high-pressure media situations, how to
respond and manage issues, and determining who should manage
what issues. Margie Elsberg, who is a 25-year veteran of the
Washington press corps, of Elsberg Associates will conduct the
workshop Sunday afternoon from 1:00 to 4:30 pm in the Fairmont
Hotel, Washington, DC, the site for all FORUM 2004
events.

CTPAA Members Elect Seven Public Affairs Pros to
the 2004-2005 Board of Directors The CTPAA membership elected seven members for
two-year terms as members of the Board of Directors. Five of the
seven are new to the association's board. The newly elected
board members are:

"As our industry faces new challenges
and ever-stronger competition, the role of cable's public
affairs professionals -- and the contribution CTPAA makes to
their ongoing efforts -- takes on added significance," said
Peter Kiley, CTPAA president and director of affiliate
relations, C-SPAN Networks. "Each of these industry leaders will
make substantial contributions to the operation and direction of
the association, furthering the impact of cable's public
outreach and business objectives."

Congratulations to Bridget Baker, Ellen East and
Dena Kaplan!

CTPAA members Bridget Baker, senior
vice president, Cable Distribution, NBC Cable Networks; Ellen
East, vice president, communications and public affairs, Cox
Communications, Inc.; and Dena Kaplan, senior vice president,
marketing, Game Show Network are being honored at the Women in
Cable & Telecommunications' (WICT) Wonder Women Luncheon.
Held Tuesday, March 30th at the Marriot Marquis in
New York City, the luncheon celebrates 13 of the most
influential women in broadband and cable. Multichannel
News and the New York Chapter of WICT are the sponsors of
the Wonder Women Luncheon. Individual tickets are $125 and a
table of ten is $1,500. For more information or to register,
contact Sandy Friedman at Reed Business Information at
646-746-6520 or safriedman@reedbusiness.com

The 2004 ESPN Good Sports Award will
be presented to Cox Communications for its Everyday Heroes
initiative, and MTV News is the winner of the 2004 Joel A.
Berger Award for its MTV News Now: Sex, School &
Scandal program. Both awards will be given out during the
2004 Beacon Awards Gala at FORUM 2004.

Cox Communications is the recipient
of the ESPN Good Sports Award for its Everyday Heroes
initiative. The award is given annually to a project that
generates outstanding community involvement through education
and athletics. Cox Arizona partnered with the Arizona
Interscholastic Association to create the Everyday Heroes Awards
Gala. A formal event broadcast live on Cox9 from the historic
Orpheum Theatre, Everyday Heroes featured CNN's Daryn Kagan,
live performances from talented high school students, and the
presentation of nearly $40,000 in scholarships and prizes.
Everyday Heroes honored administrators, teachers and students
for demonstrating character and honor in outstanding achievement
both on and off the field. The Everyday Heroes Gala, with
attendance of more than 1,000 people, honored character in
achievement at the high school level in a way that is
unprecedented locally or nationally, while strengthening Cox's
position among educators, elected officials and the community.
Additionally, Everyday Heroes generated sponsorship revenue,
television and print media coverage, and endorsements from
Arizona's Governor and other community leaders.

The winner of the Joel A. Berger
Award is MTV for its MTV News Now: Sex, School &
Scandal program, which premiered on World AIDS Day in 2002.
Named after the former publisher of Cablevision magazine,
the award annually recognizes an outstanding public affairs
initiative that creates AIDS awareness in local communities.
MTV News Now: Sex, School & Scandal focused on the
impact that one person's actions had on an entire community.
Through the stories of eighteen-year-old Nikko Briteramos and
twenty-year-old Prairie Blacksmith, MTV News explored the
personal impact of having unprotected sex, as both subjects are
learning to cope with living with HIV. MTV News also
investigated the legal ramifications as Nikko was arrested and
later charged with knowingly exposing his partners to the HIV
virus, which is a crime in South Dakota. For this program, MTV
News correspondent Gideon Yago traveled to Huron, South Dakota,
to explore the consequences of those actions while at the same
time educating MTV's viewers on the dangers of unprotected sex -
and the need for them to take control of their own sexual
health.

Comcast, Discovery Networks, and John Hopkins
University Hold "Space Academy"

Comcast, Discovery Networks, and The
John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab gave more than 100
middle school students from Annapolis Middle School, Catonsville
Middle School and St. John the Evangelist School in Silver
Spring, Maryland, the opportunity to study space missions and
interact with local space scientists and engineers. The "Space
Academy" was held Friday, March 5th, at the John
Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel,
Maryland.

Participating students focused on
Space Weather and demonstrations on how the weather in space
affects life on earth. The program will teach students what
creates the brilliant light shows seen in the sky (auroras) and
how events in outer space can affect weather on earth.

The "Space Academy" series take
students behind the scenes of actual space missions and
introduce them to engineers and scientists who execute some of
NASA's coolest projects. Space Weather focuses on two NASA
missions: TIMED and Polar.

TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere,
Mesosphere, Energetics, and Dynamics) is studying the influences
of the sun and humans on the least explored and understood
region of Earth's atmosphere-the mesosophere and lower
thermosphere/iconosphere-considered the gateway between Earth's
environment and space. Polar is gathering images of the aurora
and studying Earth's interaction with the solar wind in addition
to the physical processes that transfer particles and energy
into and through Earth's magnetosphere.

Comcast, The Discovery Channel, and
The John Hopkins Appled Physics Lab created and sponsor the
Space Academy series. For more information, contact Meredith
Olsen at meredith_olson@discovery.com.

Debbie A. Smith, a finanical services
executive with professional experience in minority affairs,
national business policy, and trade association management, has
been selected to serve as the executive director of the Walter
Kaitz Foundation. Smith will join the Foundation full-time
effective April 5. Her duties will include day to day management
of the Kaitz Foundation, including the awarding of Foundation
funds in support of cable industry diversity efforts, leadership
of the annual Kaitz Foundation fundraising dinner in New York
City, revamping and supervising an industry diversity Web site,
and developing a new cable industry national supplier diversity
program.

Smith's appointment as executive
director completes the transition plan approved last fall by the
Kaitz Board and the Board of Directors of the National Cable
& Telecommunications Association (NCTA). Under this plan,
the Kaitz Foundation will operate under the administative
backing of NCTA.

The cable industry
announced a comprehensive, new, consumer outreach campaign
designed to increase awareness about tools and resources cable
provides so that families can control programming that comes
into their homes and make educated and responsible decisions
about television viewing.

The multimedia initiative - a
response to calls for more information about television viewing
choices from FCC Chairman Michael Powell, key Members of
Congress, and many American television viewers - is titled
Cable Puts You in Control. It reflects the cable
industry's commitment to provide American families a wide
variety of programming choices, technology that enables
customers to block channels or programs they find unsuitable for
family viewing, and resources on media literacy to help families
better understand the entertainment and information they receive
through media today.

Robert Sachs, President and CEO of
the National Cable & Telecommunications (NCTA), detailed the
initiative in letters to FCC Chairman Powell and Congressional
leaders including chairman and ranking members U.S.
Representatives Barton, Dingell, Upton and Markey, and U.S.
Senators McCain, Hollings and Burns; and other members of the
U.S. House and Senate Commerce Committees.

Elements of Cable Puts You in
Control include:

Website

A new website will be fully
operational by April 1. It will be devoted to empowering parents
and caregivers to better supervise family television viewing by
providing them with information about how to manage their
family's television and media use. Created and maintained by
Cable in the Classroom (CIC), the cable industry's education
foundation, the site will serve as a clearinghouse for
information about responsible viewing, including:

A description of cable technology
that allows viewers to block channels

Viewing tips for parents and
caregivers

A sample description of the
children's and family programming available on cable

Media literacy information and
resources, and contact information for organizations that
promote and provide educational tools for it

Other cable industry resources
related to managing television viewing

Public Service
Announcements

A series of public service
announcements (PSAs) are in development to educate parents about
the tools available to help them manage and control the
programming that comes into their homes. Produced by
industry-based companies, these PSAs will encourage subscribers
to call their local cable operator or to visit the initiative's
Web site for more information.

NCTA anticipates completion and
distribution of the PSAs by early April and will make them
widely available to cable operators and cable networks. Many
cable networks and cable systems have committed to airing these
or similar PSAs in a variety of dayparts, including prime time,
and the PSAs also will be posted to the initiative's Web site.

Customer Communication
Materials

A portion of the effort to broaden
awareness of cable's parental control tools will include direct
communication with the approximately 70 million customers who
subscribe to basic and digital cable services. A variety of
"template" customer communication materials - including bill
stuffers, pamphlets, employee training materials and scripts for
various communication channels - will be developed in a Cable
Puts You in Control toolkit and provided to the NCTA member
operating companies that serve approximately 90 percent of all
U.S. cable households.

Media Literacy Workshops:
MediaWise Families Roadshow

Cable in the Classroom and the
National PTA will conduct a series of free workshops around the
country for parents that will address concerns about the
exposure of children to inappropriate content on television. PTA
members and local cable company representatives will help
parents learn about the TV ratings system, the V-chip, and the
various channel-blocking devices available from their local
cable company. In addition, parents will learn how media
literacy skills can help their children become critical and
discerning viewers, questioning the messages and values in a TV
program, commercial or material found online.

In addition, Cable in the Classroom
and National PTA will release in April a new report providing
guidance and ideas to help parents of children ages 2-11 select
and use media with their families in developmentally appropriate
ways. The report will be distributed free of charge through the
PTA and CIC Web sites as well as by individual PTA chapters and
local cable companies. Seventeen operators and forty-three
programmers have committed to air cable
PSAs.